18+ art exhibitions to see across Europe this summer/autumn 2026
Heading to Europe this summer? Make time for its museums, too. Beyond the beaches and city breaks, there’s plenty to discover, from blockbuster retrospectives and ambitious new commissions to acclaimed touring exhibitions. From Berlin and Venice to Arles, Basel, Zurich and Copenhagen, museums and galleries across the continent have on standout exhibitions that bring together some of today’s most influential artists. Many have opened alongside the season’s key cultural moments, including the Venice Biennale and Les Rencontres d’Arles, the celebrated photography festival . From Fujiko Nakaya’s atmospheric fog installation in Berlin and James Turrell’s monumental new Skyspace in Denmark to Michael Armitage’s major exhibition in Venice and Julianknxx’s powerful presentation at LUMA Arles, these are the exhibitions worth planning a trip around this summer.
Julianknxx, In Search of … Incredible
Julianknxx, Still from What Colours Can We Dream In This Night Filled With Salt_, 2025© Studioknx
#FLODown: Currently on view at LUMA Arles, Julianknxx’s In Search of … Incredible explores how memories, histories and cultural traditions survive, evolve and pass between generations. Through sculpture, film, sound and found objects, the exhibition examines storytelling, voice and ritual as ways of preserving identity and collective experience. It includes What Colours Can We Dream in This Night Filled with Salt?, a short film created around songs by the Boras Choir, a Marseille-based ensemble preserving Comorian cultural traditions through music and lullabies.
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Date: 1 May - 10 January 2027. Location: LUMA Arles, Parc des Ateliers, 35 Avenue Victor Hugo, 13200 Arles, France. Price: from 15 EUR. Concessions available. Website: Book now.
Fujiko Nakaya: Fog Sculpture
Fujiko Nakaya, Installation view, Neue Nationalgalerie, 2025, © Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz / David von Becker
#FLODown: Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya fills the sculpture garden of Berlin’s iconic Neue Nationalgalerie with clouds of fog, transforming Mies van der Rohe’s architecture and its surroundings. Using fine water mist, Nakaya creates ephemeral formations that shift in density, enveloping trees, sculptures and visitors before dissolving into the air. Each activation lasts eight minutes, offering a fleeting experience that changes with the weather, light and movement around it.
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Date: 2 May – 14 September 2025. Location: Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Straße 50, 10785 Berlin, Germany. Price: from 14 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Lina Lapelytė: We Make Years Out of Hours
Lina Lapelytė. We Make Years Out of Hours, exhibition view Hamburger Bahnhof, Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, 2026
© Lina Lapelytė. VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026. photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / art/beats, Florian Mag
#FLODown: For the second CHANEL Commission at Hamburger Bahnhof, Lina Lapelytė’s We Make Years Out of Hours fills the Historic Hall with 400,000 wooden cubes, which visitors and performers stack, dismantle and reshape into temporary structures. Accompanied by live singing, the work considers time, care and coexistence through an ever-changing process of making and unmaking. Its lyrics draw on poems by 15 international writers, including Khalil Gibran, Etel Adnan and Ocean Vuong, touching on community, love, loss and hope.
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Date: 1 May 2026 – 10 January 2027. Location: Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Invalidenstraße 50–51, 10557 Berlin, Germany. Price: 16 EUR. Book now
Michael Armitage: The Promise of Change
Michael Armitage, Cave, 2021
#FLODown: At Palazzo Grassi, more than 150 works by Kenyan-British artist Michael Armitage fill the Venetian palazzo, including paintings and drawings from the past decade. Drawing on East African references, mythology and Western art history, his vivid compositions address politics, migration, identity and sexuality through symbolism, memory and folklore. Across two floors, the exhibition charts the development of Armitage’s practice, from intimate scenes and portraits to expansive works rooted in historical and cultural references. The exhibition is curated by Jean-Marie Gallais in collaboration with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Caroline Bourgeois and Michelle Mlati.
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Date: 29 March 2026 – 10 January 2027. Location: Palazzo Grassi, Campo San Samuele, 3231, 30124 Venice, Italy. Price: 20 EUR. Book now
Marina Abramović, Seven Deaths
Marina Abramović, Seven deaths, exhibition view. Courtesy of Cisternern
#FLODown: Presented at Cisternerne in Copenhagen, Marina Abramović’s Seven Deaths is a cinematic opera installation inspired by seven iconic female deaths from opera history. Displayed as a sequence of films shown as one continuous narrative, accompanied by arias performed by legendary soprano Maria Callas and Featuring Abramović alongside actor Willem Dafoe, the performances addres of love, loss, desire, identity and mortality, with the atmospheric underground setting of Cisternerne intensifying the emotional and theatrical experience.
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Date: 14 March – 30 November 2026. Location: Cisternerne, Søndermarken opposite Copenhagen Zoo, Frederiksberg, Denmark. Price: From DKK 120 for adults. Book now.
Sophie Calle, Something Missing?
Image: Sophie Calle, Calle-Joconde ( Wrong turn), 2025 (detail)
#FLODown: A major retrospective of French artist Sophie Calle is on show at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, featuring seven major series and more than 300 works across the museum’s West Wing. Calle is known for turning real-life encounters, personal stories and acts of investigation into works that combine photography, text and video, often playing with the relationship between fact and fiction, intimacy and observation. The exhibition includes The Blind (1986), in which Calle asks people born blind to describe their idea of beauty, and Voir la mer (2011), which captures the first time a group of Istanbul residents saw the sea. Together, the works demonstrate Calle’s ability to turn simple questions and encounters into poignant reflections on perception, human experience and the stories we tell ourselves.
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Date: 26 March – 6 September 2026. Location: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Gl Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk, Denmark. Price: from 145DKK. Book now.
Thomas Dambo, The Garbage Man
Thomas Dambo – The Garbage Man. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
#FLODown: At ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Danish artist Thomas Dambo presents an exhibition of his imaginative large-scale troll sculptures and installations made from recycled materials. Known for turning discarded objects into playful works inspired by nature and folklore. The exhibition invites visitors to discover how waste can be reimagined as art while encouraging curiosity, environmental awareness and a closer connection with the natural world.
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Date: 24 May – 29 November 2026. Location: ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj, Denmark. Price: from 150 DKK. Book now.
Lydia Ourahmane: 5 Works
Installation view 5 Works, Lydia Ourahmane. Image credit Marco Cappelletti/Courtesy of the artist and the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation
#FLODown: Presented at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation in Venice, 5 Works is a newly commissioned solo exhibition by Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane, developed during her residency in the city. Working across installation, sculpture, sound and moving image, Ourahmane draws on Venice’s people, places and infrastructure, examining displacement, access and the forces that determine how people and objects move. Created through collaborations with local craftspeople, technicians, organisations and historic sites, the works incorporate materials including antique sculpture moulds, church lighting and decommissioned bed linen. Extending beyond the Foundation itself, the exhibition includes a functioning pier commissioned for the island of Poveglia, reflecting Ourahmane’s interest in how art can intersect with the practical realities of everyday life.
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Date: 5 May – 22 November 2026. Location: Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, Venice, Italy. Price: Free admission. Website:nf.foundation
James Turrell: As Seen Below – The Dome
As Seen Below – The Dome, James Turrell, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark. Image courtesy of MTotoe/ FLO London
#FLODown: #FLODown: James Turrell’s largest museum-based Skyspace to date opened at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum this summer. As Seen Below – The Dome is a vast, circular space with an opening in the ceiling that frames the changing sky, while subtle shifts in light alter the colour and atmosphere of the interior. Measuring 16 metres high and 40 metres in diameter, the permanent installation is Turrell’s 100th Skyspace and one of his most ambitious works to date.
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Date: Opened 19 June 2026 (permanent installation). Location: ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aros Allé 2, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. Price: 200 DKK. Book now.
Mohamed Bourouissa: Pour Noubia
Mohamed Bourouissa – Pour Noubia, Ausstellungsansicht Museum Marta Herford, 13. September 2025 – 18. Januar 2026. Foto: Hans Schröder, © Marta Herford gGmbH.
#FLODown: At Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Mohamed Bourouissa’s Pour Noubia follows the life of his aunt, Noubia Meyer, from Blida in Algeria to the Paris suburbs and Osnabrück, where she died in 2022. Drawing on the photographic and audiovisual archive she left him, Bourouissa combines film, photography, objects and AI animation to reconstruct a life shaped by migration, work and family. The exhibition is structured in stages, with each room introducing different people and places connected to Noubia’s story. Alongside documentary material, Bourouissa uses fictional and reconstructed elements to fill gaps in the archive, creating a portrait that is as much about what can be recovered as what remains unknown.
Date: 13 June – 6 September 2026. Location: Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Löwenbräukunst, Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zürich, Switzerland. Price: Free. migrosmuseum.ch
Pierre Huyghe
Installation view of “Pierre Huyghe”, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2026. © Pierre Huyghe, represented by ProLitteris (CH) / ADAGP (FR). Photo: Ola Rindal
#FLODown: Fondation Beyeler has an excellent exhibition dedicated to the work of Pierre Huyghe, bringing newly created works together with key pieces from recent years. Working across film, technology, biology and digital media, Huyghe creates dynamic environments where fiction and reality converge and different forms of life, technology and matter interact. Conceived specifically for the museum, the exhibition reflects his interest in works shaped by time and unpredictability.
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Click here for our review of Pierre Huyghe at Foundation Beyeler.
Date: 24 May – 13 September 2026. Location: Fondation Beyeler, Baselstrasse 101, 4125 Riehen/Basel, Switzerland. Price: CHF 25. Book now.
Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future
Installation view of Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future at the Gegenwart, Kunstmuseum Basel, 2026. Image credit Samuel Bramley. Image courtesy the artist, Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing and Guangzhou, and Sprüth Magers.
#FLODown: Testimonies to the Near Future at Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart is Cao Fei’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland and her largest survey in Europe to date, bringing together works from the past three decades across video, digital media, photography, installation and sculpture. The Chinese artist transforms the museum into a city-like environment, with interconnected installations and video works spread across all four floors. From factories and virtual cities to dreamlike landscapes and imagined futures, Cao Fei examines how technology, globalisation and economic change are reshaping everyday life.
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Date: 30 May – 11 October 2026. Location: Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart, St. Alban-Rheinweg 60, 4052 Basel, Switzerland. Price: CHF 35. Book now.
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler was recently celebrated at MoMA and will soon be featured at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Image credit Alexander Liberman / © J. Paul Getty Trust / © Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / ProLitteris, Zurich / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026
#FLODown: Also at Kunstmuseum Basel is a major retrospective featuring more than 50 works from six decades of Helen Frankenthaler’s career. A key focus is her engagement with art history, paintings by artists she admired, from the Renaissance to modernism, are shown alongside her own, revealing how she absorbed and transformed earlier ideas into her own language of abstraction. The exhibition also traces her experimentation across painting, works on paper and printmaking, from the pioneering Soak-Stain technique that helped shape Colour Field painting to the more open and expansive works of her later years.
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Date: 18 April – 23 August 2026. Location: Kunstmuseum Basel, St. Alban-Graben 16, 4051 Basel, Switzerland. Price: CHF 35. Book now
Marisol
Exhibition view Kunsthaus Zürich, Photo © Franca Candrian
#FLODown: A retrospective devoted to Venezuelan-American artist Marisol is on show at Kunsthaus Zürich, bringing fresh attention to an artist whose work encompasses Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme and social commentary. Known for her painted wooden sculptures, made from carved wood, found objects and hand-drawn details, Marisol created figures that were often humorous, theatrical and unsettling. The exhibition explores her reflections on identity, gender, celebrity and social roles, while highlighting her distinctive use of her own likeness throughout her work. Once celebrated in 1960s New York alongside figures such as Andy Warhol, this presentation reconsiders Marisol’s place as one of the most original artists of the post-war period.
Date: 17 April – 23 August 2026. Location: Kunsthaus Zürich, Heimplatz 1, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland. Price: CHF 31 adults / CHF 22 concessions. Book now.
Camille Henrot: Paper Planes
Camille Henrot, Paper Planes, 2026. Installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary, 2026. Image credit David Stjernholm
#FLODown: Currently on view at Copenhagen Contemporary, Paper Planes is Camille Henrot’s largest solo exhibition in Scandinavia, bringing together installation, sculpture, painting, drawing and film to examine imagination, care and alternative ways of understanding contemporary life. The exhibition features the premiere of In the Veins (2026), a film that considers biodiversity loss and climate grief through small acts of care, alongside works that question communication, behaviour and the systems that shape everyday experience. As the first presentation in Copenhagen Contemporary’s Contemporary Icons series, the exhibition gives Henrot the opportunity to create an ambitious site-specific project within the institution’s industrial spaces.
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Date: 5 June – 31 December 2026. Location: Copenhagen Contemporary, Refshalevej 173A, 1432 Copenhagen K, Denmark. Price: From 140 DKK. Book now.
SUPERFLEX: Come Hell or High Water
SUPERFLEX, The Ark Factory, 2026. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
#FLODown: ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art also has an exhibition by Danish collective SUPERFLEX, who imagine a future in which the museum lies beneath the sea, staged as an ark for all species. In Come Hell Or High Water, blue light, sandbags, barricades and floating crates suggest a museum already submerged, while works from the collective’s 30-year career appear as the cargo of a sunken ship. At the heart of the exhibition is The Ark Factory, a new long-term project producing sections of an ark designed to become an artificial reef, supporting marine biodiversity as sea levels rise. Through art, research and speculation, SUPERFLEX considers how humans might prepare for an uncertain future and live alongside other species.
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Date: 7 May 2026 – 3 January 2027. Location: ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj, Denmark. Price: 150 DKK. Book now.
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
Kerry James Marshall, De Style, 1993, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Ruth and Jacob Bloom. © Kerry James Marshall. Photo by Jack Hems
#FLODown: Travelling from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, The Histories by Kerry James Marshall at the Kunsthaus Zürich features a series of large-scale paintings that reimagine historical painting by placing Black figures and everyday Black life at the centre of art history. The works address how history has been represented in Western art and challenge the absence of Black narratives, while celebrating identity, culture, and lived experience through detailed, symbolic compositions.
Date: Until 16 August 2026. Location: Kunsthaus Zürich, Heimplatz 1, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland. Price: Adults CHF 31 / Concessions CHF 22. Book now
Henrik Olesen: Copies of Real-Life Objects, Tools and Food
Henrik Olesen, Food chain incl prehistoric animals, Den Frie, 2025 Image: David Stjernholm
#FLODown: Henrik Olesen’s exhibition Copies of Real-Life Objects, Tools and Food at Kunsthalle Zürich marks his first solo presentation in the city in nearly twenty years. Occupying both floors of the institution, the exhibition brings together existing works alongside new pieces created specifically for the show, reflecting Olesen’s ongoing interest in systems of classification, everyday objects, and the structures that shape how meaning is produced. Curated by Fanny Hauser, the presentation extends his conceptual approach through sculptural and installation-based works that reframe familiar materials and references within a critical artistic framework.
Date: 13 June – 6 September 2026. Location: Kunsthalle Zürich, Löwenbräukunst, Limmatstrasse 270, Zurich, Switzerland. Price: Regular entry: 12 CHF; Reduced entry: 8 CHF. Book now
Lucian Freud
Girl with Roses; British Council Collection. © The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2025 / Bridgeman Images
#FLODown: If you missed the Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year, there’s now a final chance to see it at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition brings together paintings, drawings and prints by the British artist, exploring his lifelong fascination with the human figure and his distinctive approach to portraiture.
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Date: 11 June – 27 September 2026. Location: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Gl Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk, Denmark. Price: from 145DKK. Book now.
A Kind of Paradise:Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art
#FLODown: A Kind of Paradise at Museum Rietberg brings together works by 20 international artists who rework colonial-era photographs to examine how these images continue to shape ideas of identity, history and belonging. Artists including Sammy Baloji, Yuki Kihara, Rosana Paulino, Wendy Red Star and Sasha Huber use photography, film, sculpture, textiles and collage to question the stories embedded in historical archives and offer alternative perspectives on the people and cultures represented. The exhibition highlights acts of archival recovery and resistance, alongside more imaginative responses that reclaim images once used to define and control how others were portrayed.
Date: 16 April – 6 September 2026. Location: Museum Rietberg, Gablerstrasse 15, 8002 Zurich, Switzerland.Price: CHF 18 / CHF 14. Book now
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